English

Representations of fusion categories and their commutants

Operator Algebras 2020-04-20 v1 Category Theory Quantum Algebra

Abstract

A bicommutant category is a higher categorical analog of a von Neumann algebra. We study the bicommutant categories which arise as the commutant C\mathcal{C}' of a fully faithful representation CBim(R)\mathcal{C}\to\operatorname{Bim}(R) of a unitary fusion category C\mathcal{C}. Using results of Izumi, Popa, and Tomatsu about existence and uniqueness of representations of unitary (multi)fusion categories, we prove that if C\mathcal{C} and D\mathcal{D} are Morita equivalent unitary fusion categories, then their commutant categories C\mathcal{C}' and D\mathcal{D}' are equivalent as bicommutant categories. In particular, they are equivalent as tensor categories: (CMoritaD)(CtensorD). \Big(\,\,\mathcal{C}\,\,\simeq_{\text{Morita}}\,\,\mathcal{D}\,\,\Big) \qquad\Longrightarrow\qquad \Big(\,\,\mathcal{C}'\,\,\simeq_{\text{tensor}}\,\,\mathcal{D}'\,\,\Big). This categorifies the well-known result according to which the commutants (in some representations) of Morita equivalent finite dimensional C\rm C^*-algebras are isomorphic von Neumann algebras, provided the representations are `big enough'. We also introduce a notion of positivity for bi-involutive tensor categories. For dagger categories, positivity is a property (the property of being a C\rm C^*-category). But for bi-involutive tensor categories, positivity is extra structure. We show that unitary fusion categories and Bim(R)\operatorname{Bim}(R) admit distinguished positive structures, and that fully faithful representations CBim(R)\mathcal{C}\to\operatorname{Bim}(R) automatically respect these positive structures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.08271,
  title  = {Representations of fusion categories and their commutants},
  author = {André Henriques and David Penneys},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.08271},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

40 pages, many figures